Category Archives: Congress
Harry Reid Doesn’t Hate Kids with Cancer
Harry Reid got into trouble with children with cancer last week.
The NIH includes children in some of its cancer research programs. It became a victim of the government shutdown. The House wants to pass bills to fund NIH as well as other popular programs that are being shutdown, but the senate refuses to go along.
CNN’s Dana Bash asked Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, “But if you can help one child who has cancer why wouldn’t you do that?” Reid: “Why would we want to do that? I have 1,100 people at Nellis Air Force Base who are sitting at home.” He then went on to call Bash “irresponsible or reckless”.
Reid later apologized but still refuses to pass any bills the don’t include funding for everything including ObamaCare.
Why Harry Doesn’t Want to Help Kids with Cancer
Seth Mandel, in Commentary, thinks this is a strategy to avoid exposing just how much government spending really is non-essential:
“That raises a different question: if Republicans are willing to pass all these spending bills, why won’t they just remove the strings and fund the whole government? And the answer is because they are–intentionally or not–demonstrating just how much of the government is not essential. John Steele Gordon wrote yesterday that the shutdown exposes the waste in the federal government: if most employees are non-essential, what on earth are taxpayers paying all those salaries and benefits for?”
The Atlantic Wire posted the headline, “Come on, no. Harry Reid Doesn’t Hate Kids With Cancer”.
The WSJ’s Best of the Web James Taranto says, “When you feel compelled to answer a question like that, it’s a sign you aren’t winning the argument.”
ObamaCare Subsidy for Congress
You get an ObamaCare subsidy if you make less than 40% of the poverty level. The poverty level bar is lower for persons of Congress. They make $174,000 and get and still get a subsidy.
When the Affordable Care act was being passed late in the night, Republican Senator Charles Grassley got members of Congress to agree to go to the exchanges, just like everyone else, to buy health care.
Except the political class isn’t like everyone else. They get gold-plated coverage mostly paid for by the government. Grassley’s plan meant they would now be liable for thousands of dollars in out of pocket expenses.
Congress Gets Its Subsidy
Well, the political class takes care of its own and President Obama got the Office of Personal Management to restore the subsidy. You’d think Republicans would raise a stink about this and try to blame Obama for shutting down the government in order to save subsidies for politicians.
But we didn’t hear that so much. The reason, according to Forbes, is that it was Speaker Boehner, working behind the scenes, who pushed Obama to push to restore the subsidies.
Update: Michael Tanner of Cato Institute points out that 780 companies and 451 unions have received exemptions from ObamaCare.
House Republicans offered an amendment to strip out the ObamaCare subsidy for Congress but the Senate refused to bring it to a vote.
Political Class and Law
The law doesn’t apply to big business or the political class when it comes to the Affordable Care Act.
The employer mandate requires companies with 50 or more employees to provide comprehensive health care. However, the reporting requirements were just too complex for the government to figure out, so the mandate was delayed for a year.
As a show of good will, while ramming the bill through the Senate the night before Christmas, the politicians agreed to impose Obama Care requirements on themselves. Once they passed the bill and found out what was in it they were shocked to learn it would cost them, and their staffs, huge hunks of cash. No problem. The White House helped tweak the law and our betters were unburdened.
Who’s the Law For?
Now big labor wants Obama to twerk er tweak for them.
Who will the law apply to? Just us serfs.
Syria Red Line
Who says that President Obama’s words don’t matter. He warned the president of Syria not to gas his own people. A gas attack meant crossing a red line that would trigger a U.S. response. Apparently we’re down with killing 100,000 Syrians by other means.
Anyway, It looks like Assad has jumped the Red Line. Now we have to respond or lose credibility and, according to the polls, the American people have no stomach for another war.
Going it Alone in Syria
Not only that, the British Parliament voted not to help. It’s the first time they’ve denied the Prime Minister a request for military backing since 1782, when Parliament gave up on the American colonies! Maybe Obama should have kept the Churchill bust.
So far our leader says he’ll go ahead without the British, UN, or United States Congress. The French are still in. Freedom Fries any one?
Crony Congress
The president sings the praises of the middle class but hasn’t changed his tune on the individual mandate to buy Obamacare. Meanwhile he has taken care of big business and the political class by delaying the employer mandate for a year and relieving congress and staff of their obligation to pay for ObamaCare. The WSJ says the law is a “mere suggestion” to this White House. It’s enough to make Greta Van Susteren throw up.
Update:
Michael F. Cannon weighs in with Congress’s ObamaCare Waiver in NRO:
Obamacare includes a provision that should cost each member of Congress and each staffer $5,000 to $11,000 per year. Needless to say, the ruling class was not pleased.
Congress wasn’t about to try to exempt itself from this provision explicitly, though. If John Q. Congressman voted to give himself an Obamacare waiver that his constituents don’t get, he wouldn’t be John Q. Congressman much longer. What’s an aristocrat to do?
On July 30, I predicted that, even though he had no authority to do so, President Obama would waive that provision at taxpayers’ expense. On August 1, he ignobly obliged the aristocracy by decreeing we peasants give each member and staffer $5,000 or $11,000, depending on whether they want self-only or family coverage. It’s good to be king.
